"If I ever tell you the Bad Thing's coming, and I tell you to run, don't
just stand around like a dumb person. You just run.
" Derek stared at him, thinking about it, still smiling, then after a
while he said, "Sure, okay."
"Promise?"
"Promise. But what's a bad thing?"
"I don't know really, for sure, but I'll feel it when it's coming, I
think, and tell you, and you'll run."
"Where?"
"Anywhere. Down the hall. Find some aides, stay with them."
"Sure. You better wash. Breakfast soon. Maybe sticky buns."
Thomas unwrapped himself from the blanket and got out of bed. He
stepped into his slippers again and walked to the bathroom.
Just as Thomas was opening the bathroom door, Derek said.
"You mean at breakfast?" Thomas turned.
"Huh?"
"You mean a bad thing might come at breakfast?"
"Might," Thomas said.
"Could it be... poached eggs?"
"Huh?"
"The bad thing-could it be poached eggs? I don't like poached eggs, all
slimy, yuck, that'd be real bad, not good all like cereal and bananas
and sticky buns."
"No, no," Thomas said.
"The bad thing isn't poached egg It's a person, some funny-weird person.
I'll feel it when it's coming, and tell you, and you'll run."
"Oh. Yeah, sure. A person."
Thomas went into the bathroom, closed the door. He didn't have much
beard. He had an electric razor, but he only used it a couple-few times
a month, and today he didn't need it.
He brushed his teeth, though. And he peed. He made the water start in
the shower. Only then did he let himself laugh, because enough time had
passed so Derek wouldn't even wonder why Thomas was laughing at him.
Poached eggs!
Though Thomas usually didn't like seeing himself, see how lumpy and
wrong and dumb his face was, he peeked into the steam-streaked mirror.
One time long ago, past when he could remember, he'd been laughing when
he'd happened to see himself in a mirror, and for once-surprise-he
hadn't felt so bad about how he looked. When he laughed he looked like
a normal person. Just pretending to laugh didn't make him look more
normal, it had to be real laughing, and a smile didn't do it, either,
because a smile wasn't enough of a laugh to change his face. In fact, a
smile could sometimes look sad, he couldn't stand seeing himself at all.
Poached eggs.
Thomas shook his head, and when his laughter finished he turned from the
mirror.
To Derek the most worst bad thing he could think of was poached eggs and
no sticky buns, which was very funny ha-ha. You try to tell Derek about
walking dead people and scissors sticking out of bellies and something
that eats little live animals, and old Derek would look at you and smile
and nod and not get it at all.
For as long as he could remember, Thomas had wished he was a normal
person, not dumb, and many times he thanked God for at least making him
not as dumb as poor Derek. But now he half wished he was dumber, so he
could get those ugly nasty vision-pictures out of his mind, so he could
forget about Derek going to die and the Bad Thing coming and Julie being
in danger, so he'd have nothing to worry about except poached eggs,
which wouldn't be much of a worry at all, since he sort of liked poached
eggs.
WHEN Clint Karaghiosis arrived at Dakota & Dakota shortly before nine
o'clock, Bobby took him by the shoulder, turned him around, and went
back to the elevator with him.
"You drive, and I'll fill you in on what's happened during the night. I
know you've got other cases to tend to, the Pollard thing is getting
hotter by the minute."
"Where're we going?"
"First, Palomar Labs. They called. Test results are in."
a few clouds remained in the sky, and they were far off toward the
mountains, moving away like the billow sails of great galleons on an
eastward journey. It was a quintessential southern California day:
blue, pleasantly warm, everything green and fresh, and rush-hour traffic
so hideously snarled that it could transform an ordinary citizen into a
foaming-at-the-mouth sociopath with a yearning to pull a trigger of a
semiautomatic weapon.
Clint avoided freeways, but even surface streets were clogged. By the
time Bobby recounted everything that transpired since they had seen each
other yesterday afternoon they were still ten minutes from Palomar in
spite of the questions occasionally asked by Clint's amazement-subdued
like a o reactions, but amazement none the less at the discovery that
Frank was evidently able to teleport himself.
Finally Bobby changed the subject because talking too Clint about
psychic phenomena to a phlegmatic guy like Clint made him feel like an
airhead, as if he had lost his grip on reality. While they inched along
Bristol Avenue, he said,
"I can remember when you could go anywhere in Orange County and never
get caught in traffic."
"Not so long ago."
"I remember when you didn't have to sign a developer's waiting list to
buy a house. Demand wasn't five times the supply."
"Yeah."
"And I remember when orange groves were all over Orange County."
"Me too."
Bobby sighed. "Hell, listen to me, like an old geezer, babbling about
the good old days. Pretty soon, I'll be talking about how nice it was
when there were still dinosaurs around."
"Dreams," Clint said. "Everyone's got a dream, and the one more people
have than any other is the California dream, so they never stop coming,
even though so many have come now that the dream isn't really quite
attainable any more, not the original dream that started it all. Of
course, maybe a dream should be unattainable, or at least at the outer
limits of your reach. If it's too easy, it's meaningless."
Bobby was surprised by the long burst of words from Clint, but more
surprised to hear the man talking about something as intangible as
dreams.
"You're already a Californian, so what's your dream?" After a brief
hesitation, Clint said,
"That Felina will be able to hear someday. There're so many medical
advancements these days, new discoveries and treatments and techniques
all the time."
As Clint turned left off Bristol, onto the side street where Palomar
Laboratories stood, Bobby decided that was a good dream, a damned fine
dream, maybe even better than his and Julie's dream about buying time
and getting a chance to bring Thomas out of Cielo Vista and into a
remade family.
They parked in the lot beside the huge concrete-block building in which
Palomar Laboratories was housed. As they were walking toward the front
door, Clint said, "Oh, by the way, the receptionist here thinks I'm gay,
which is fine with me."
"What?"
Clint went inside without saying more, and Bobby followed him to the
reception window. An attractive blonde sat at the counter.
"Hi, Lisa," Clint said.
"Hi!" She punctuated her response by crackin
g her chewing gum.
"Dakota and Dakota."
"I remember," she said.
"Your stuff's ready. I'll get it." She glanced at Bobby and smiled, and
he smiled, too, although her expression seemed a little peculiar to him.
When she returned with two large, sealed manila envelopes-one labeled
SAMPLES, the other ANALYSES-she handed the second one to Bobby. They
stepped to one side of the lounge, away from the counter.
Bobby tore open the envelope and skimmed the document inside.
"Cat's blood."
"You serious?"
"Yeah. When Frank woke up in that motel, he was cover with cat's
blood."
"I knew he was no killer."
Bobby said, "The cat may have an opinion about that."
"The other stuff is?"
"Well... bunch of technical terms here... but what it comes down to is
that it's what it looks like. Black sand."
Stepping back to the reception counter, Clint said, "You remember we
talked about a black-sand beach in Hawaii
"Kaimu," she said. "It's a dynamite place."
"Yeah, Kaimu. Is it the only one?"
"Black-sand beach, you mean? No. There's Punaluu, which is a real sweet
place too. Those are on the big island. I agree there must be more on
the other islands, 'cause there's volcanoes all over the place, aren't
there?"
Bobby joined them at the counter. "What do volcanoes had to do with
it?"
Lisa took her chewing gum out of her mouth and put it waside on a piece
of paper. "Well, the way I heard it, really hot lava flows into the
sea, and when it meets the water, there're huge explosions, which throw
off zillions and zillions of the really teeny-tiny beads of black glass,
and then over a long period of time the waves rub all the beads together
until they ground down into sand."
"They have these beaches anywhere but Hawaii?" Bobby wondered.
She shrugged. "Probably. Clint, is this fella your... friend?"
"Yeah," Clint said.
"I mean, you know, your good friend?"
"Yeah," Clint said, without looking at Bobby.
Lisa winked at Bobby. "Listen, you make Clint take you to Kaimu, 'cause
I'll tell you something-it's really terrific to go out on a black beach
at night, make love under the stars, because it's soft, for one thing,
but mainly because black sand doesn't reflect moonlight like regular
sand. It seems like you're floating in space, darkness all around, it
really sharpens your senses,.if you know what I mean."
"Sounds terrific," Clint said.
"Take care, Lisa." He headed for the door.
As Bobby turned to follow Clint, Lisa said, "You make him take you to
Kaimu, you hear? You'll have a good time."
Outside, Bobby said, "Clint, you've got some explaining to do."
"Didn't you hear her? These little beads of black glass-"
"That's not what I'm talking about. Hey, look at you, you're grinning.
I don't think I've ever seen you grinning. I don't think I like you
grinning."
BY NINE o'clock, Lee Chen had arrived at the office, opened a bottle of
orange-flavored seltzer, and settled into the computer room a midst his
beloved hardware, where Julie was waiting for him.
He was five six, slender but wiry,a warm brass complexion and jet-black
hair that bristled in a modified punk style. He wore red tennis shoes
and socks, black cotton pants with a white belt, a black and
charcoal-grey shirt with a subtle leaf pattern, and a black jacket with
narrow lapels and big shoulder pads. He was the most stylishly dressed
employee at Dakota & Dakota, even compared to Cassie H ley, their
receptionist, who was an unashamed clotheshor.
While Lee sat in front of his computers, sipping seltzer, Julie filled
him in on what had happened at the hospital and showed him the printouts
of the information Bobby had acquired earlier that morning.
Frank Pollard sat with them, in the chair, where Julie could keep an eye
on him. Throughout the conversation, Lee exhibited no surprise at what
he was being told, as if his computers had bestowed on him such enormous
restrain and resignation nothing-not even a man capable of
teleportation-could surprise him. Julie knew that Lee, well as everyone
else in the Dakota & Dakota family, would never leak a word of any
client's business to anyone; but didn't know how much of his supercooled
demeanor was real and how much was a conscious image that he put on
every moment with his ultra-voguish clothes.
Though his unshakable nonchalance might be partially feigned, his talent
for computers was unquestionably real.
When Julie had finished her condensed version of recent events, Lee
said, "Okay, what do you need from me now?"
There was no doubt on either his part or hers that eventually he could
provide whatever she required.
She gave him a steno pad. Double rows of currency serial numbers filled
the first ten pages.
"Those are random samplings of the bills in each of the bags of cash
we're holding for Frank. Can you find out if it's hot money-stolen,
maybe an extortion or ransom payment?"
Lee quickly paged through the lists.
"No consecutive numbers? That makes it harder. Usually cops don't have
a record of the serial numbers of stolen money unless it was brand-new
bills, which are still bound in packets, consecutively numbered, right
off the press."
"Most of this cash is fairly well circulated."
"There's an outside chance it might still be from a ransom or extortion
payoff, like you said. The cops would've taken down all the numbers
before they let the victim make the drop, just in case the perp made a
clean getaway. It looks bleak, but I'll try. What else?"
Julie said, "An entire family in Garden Grove, last name Farris, was
murdered last year."
"Because of me," Frank said.
Lee propped his elbows on the arms of his chair, leaned back, and
steepled his fingers. He looked like a wise Zen master who had been
forced to don the clothes of an avant-garde artist after getting the
wrong suitcase at the airport.
"No one really dies, Mr. Pollard. They just go on from here. Grief is
good, but guilt is pointless."
Though she knew too few computer fanatics to be certain, Julie suspected
that not many found a way to combine the hard realities of science and
technology with religion. But in fact, Lee had arrived at a belief in
God through his work with computers and his interest in modern physics.
He once explained to her why a profound understanding of the
dimensionless space inside a computer network, combined with a modern
physicist's view of the universe, led inevitably to faith in a Creator,
but she hadn't followed a thing he'd said.
She gave Lee Chen the dates and details of the Farris and Roman murders.
"We think they were all killed by the same man. I haven't got a clue to
his real name, so I call him Mr. Blue. Considering the savagery of the
murders, we suspect he's a serial killer with a long list of victims. If
we're right, the murders have been so widely spread or Mr. Blue has
; covered his tracks so well that the press has never made the connections
between the crimes."
"Otherwise," Frank said, "they'd have sensationalized it on their front
pages. Especially if this guy regularly bites his victims."
"But since most police agencies are computer-linked these days," Julie
said, "they might've made the connections across jurisdictions, saw what
the press didn't. There might be one more quiet, ongoing investigations
between local, state, and federal authorities. We need to know if any
police in California-or the FBI nationally-are on to Mr. Blue, and we
need to know anything they've learned about him, no matter how trivial."
Lee smiled. In the middle of his brass-hued face, his teeth were like
pegs of highly polished ivory.
"That means going through public-access files in their computers. I'll
have to breech their security, one agency after another, all the way
into the FBI."
"Difficult?"
"Very. But I'm not without experience." He pushed his jacket sleeves
farther up on his arms, flexed his fingers, and turned to the terminal
Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place Page 29
